Resilience: The Key to Becoming a Successful DJ with Night Tales | Elevated Frequencies #39

olivia (00:01.789) Okay, everybody is recording. That's great. It's so nice to talk to you both. I'm really always interested when I meet duos or groups, how your artist projects came together, because I know you both had your separate things before you met. So whoever wants to start first, kind of tell me about your journey leading up until now and then how you two decided to get together.

Aaron Bannie (00:04.799) Mm-mm.

Kam (00:04.994) Great.

Aaron Bannie (00:21.504) Mm-hmm.

Aaron Bannie (00:29.782) Cam go first.

Kam (00:32.726) Uh, I was in a band called Olympic airs. Uh, I was another duo actually. We made, uh, electronic indie dance music and, uh, we were on a really good run. And, um, then in that same time, like I was always collaborating with different artists as like a feature vocalist and stuff and producer. So, um, I was on this, we were on this agency called under control. They still exist today. Shout out to Paul sticks.

Stixxie basically has this agency of domestic Australian artists and Olympic Airs was on one and Aaron had a solo project and the guy Paul he was like yo you guys should write some music together and we started from there basically

olivia (01:17.285) That's cool. That's like the old fashioned way. Instead of social media. I love that. So Erin, what were you doing before Night Tails?

Kam (01:23.275) Yeah.

Aaron Bannie (01:27.558) Yeah, so I guess brief history with me is I played sport most of my life. So I was a semi-pro soccer player back in the UK, had a marketing degree in magazine publishing, moved over to Australia, did magazine, did magazine brand marketing for a couple of years, and then moved into hospitality where I ended up being the entertainment director for the group. So I would run and look after.

restaurants, nightclubs, bars, program all their music, book all the DJs and do all the big acts like that. And then I had this kind of like epiphany moment, one of my favorite groups who are from the next town I live in UK, Corporealogy, and I saw them play in Sydney and I was like, I wanna do that. And I DJ for years and years and years anyway, so I kind of had an ear for it and then just started to write music. I had this...

As Cam said, I had this solo project called Third Floor, which is like pop emo kind of stuff. And then got introduced to Cam. And then, yeah, just kind of like basically fused both of our respective projects and ideas into kind of dance music. So, yeah, that's where Night Tales was born.

olivia (02:41.617) That's so cool. And I just seeing videos of your live performances, you bring a lot to the stage. You both sing, you both play instruments. So talk to me about the process of when you're making these tracks together, like how you figure out how it all meshes. Cause I always think it's interesting when there's layers of DJing instruments singing, it's complex.

Kam (03:07.031) Yeah.

It's a two-part process. I find that like a lot of electronic producers whilst they're producing or creating, they're not really thinking about how it's gonna translate live. It's like almost the opposite where you create it and then you work out how to play live. Whereas like someone that might be composing or producing with like keys or whatever, it makes sense straight away. It's an easy transition. So.

We figure out what songs we're excited about to play live. And then we go back to Ableton and figure out, okay, what parts do we want to play? And you know, what's going to be live? What's going to be backing track? What's what lead parts? Well, I'll do all the lead parts singing, but then we figure out whether we want to keep like background vocals. So it's, yeah, it's a funny process. Yeah.

olivia (03:55.577) That's interesting. It's, yeah. So it's funny. I was reading the Wikipedia page on Kiss, the band Kiss last night, and they actually kind of had a similar process because they realized their shows were selling out faster than they were selling records. They really started to focus on what, like, well, what's causing that? It's because people are...

Kam (04:06.286) Mm-hmm.

Aaron Bannie (04:07.012) Mm-hmm.

Aaron Bannie (04:17.226) Hmm.

Kam (04:18.125) Wow.

Kam (04:23.799) Yeah.

olivia (04:24.397) or for like the pageantry of their, you know, makeup and hair and performance and, you know, the elements. And so have you found that you're able to connect with your audience more so in person than any other way?

Kam (04:28.338) Yeah.

Aaron Bannie (04:41.002) Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's kind of like, we look at it like this. It's kind of, when you listen to NIGHT TALES and our music, you hear it like on the DSPs, whichever one you want to use. And that's one experience. And then when you come to see a live performance, when me and Cam were playing all the music and the instrument, that kind of stuff, that's another version of what we do, because what we do is we actually flip a lot of the original songs.

and make them come more dance friendly or do these like, you know, party matchups, whatever it is. And then when we do our DJing, we also sing as well. So there's all these different kinds of experiences that people have. So you can listen to us, you know, while you're in your car running or whatever you're doing, Night Tails, when you come to a show, it's like, it's really upbeat performance, lots of showmanship. We kind of bring that like urban feel to the electronic kind of genre. So.

Kam (05:21.54) Hmm.

Kam (05:26.655) Yeah.

Kam (05:33.31) And if we ever change up a song and it elicits like a really strong response, sometimes we look at each other and we're like, damn, we should have made the song like that. Because it's an instant, not gratification, but you can see instantly that people are resonating with it. Whereas when you're listening to something on Spotify, it's just, it's more of a them only type of experience. So you get to actually see with our own eyes how people are responding.

Aaron Bannie (05:41.228) Mm-hmm.

olivia (06:02.305) Right. Yeah. It's the immediate feedback. And, you know, as a fan of this genre, I always get excited to go see artists who I know are gonna try something different live. Like, they're not just gonna go up there and play the tracks that they produce and that I love, but I know there's gonna be some sort of element of surprise. And I think as the genre progresses, more and more people are looking for that, for something.

Kam (06:06.218) Made of feedback.

Kam (06:19.932) Hmm

Kam (06:31.286) Yeah. And people pay attention to sometimes we'll post a video and they'll be like, wait a minute, I thought the lyrics were blah, blah. I was like, I just felt like changing at the time. Ha ha ha.

olivia (06:32.069) for something different.

Aaron Bannie (06:39.778) Hmm.

olivia (06:42.049) Yeah, that's like a unique experience that can't be recreated. It's like a moment. And, and so you're really

Kam (06:48.198) Yeah, that's it. Totally, yeah, you can only bottle up the memory, you know?

Aaron Bannie (06:54.482) Yeah. And our live show is always evolving because when we first did our American live show, which was first, it was the electric forest, so electric zoo, but that doesn't really count. It was actually a Pal Norte festival in Mexico, in Monterey. And we have our kind of like stage presence, but we're both behind the keyboard silos. And it was kind of almost robotic, but people really responded to it. But now it's kind of like, I stay in the background, you know, kind of

Kam (07:23.33) Yeah.

Aaron Bannie (07:23.682) puppeteering a lot of the stuff, Cam's the front man doing his showmanship stuff, then I might come down and join him, and vice versa, and we have like crowd interaction. And a good example of that would be if you look on YouTube, our YouTube channel, we were one of the acts that luckily got filmed for Bonnaroo last year on Hulu, and the whole set's there, and you can see kind of like how the live show kind of is, and we brought someone on stage and that kind of stuff, so.

Kam (07:49.046) The challenge that we sometimes face is that a lot of these electronic stage structures or productions aren't really catered to live music because we have a live element, we'll arrive on stages and we're like, so we need X, Y and Z and it'll be in our technical writer and they'll be like, oh, we can't do that. And it's like, no, like, you know, this is where we're a live act, you know what I'm saying? I get it. There's nine DJs on there, but even though there's only one or two live acts, you still got to, you know what I'm saying?

Aaron Bannie (08:09.673) Hmm. Yeah.

olivia (08:18.949) Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a lot more involved. So when it comes to planning a set, what are you making those changes on the fly, like literally on the fly, or how much is planning versus how much is feeling out the moment?

Kam (08:19.126) So we run into that sometimes.

Aaron Bannie (08:37.694) We always like try and plan as much as we can just because there's like the technical element of it. Like we have to run it all through a laptop and Ableton to play the part. So we kind of, we look at like, we have a kind of a template structure for our live sets, but depending on the festival, like a lot of festivals are kind of a little bit different. Some are more kind of chilled in the forest kind of vibes and some are more kind of hardcore EDM. So we'll adapt and change.

the set to like as per kind of festival. But yeah, with festivals and that, we have to kind of really program it. And then once we program it, then we rehearse, and we rehearse and rehearse. And then when it comes to game time, we're ready to go.

Kam (09:22.53) And I think the next steps for us, we've discussed it very briefly only a couple of days ago, is that we wanted more flexibility. Because you could have a set that's in stone, but if it's not getting the response you're looking for, you gotta be able to kind of move on the fly. So we wanna introduce a little bit more flexibility to, yeah, to introduce new songs. But it's difficult, especially when a lot of the songs that we create, and then when we blend them together, they're kind of...

Aaron Bannie (09:25.864) Ahem.

Kam (09:52.182) they're automated, you know, so sometimes you don't really have a choice. And I think with dance music as well, people just constantly want to hear a beat.

olivia (09:56.546) Yeah.

olivia (10:01.197) Yes, yes. No, that's really interesting because there's so many additional elements. Like, you know, when I go see a DJ who's just, you know, mixing up there, they can change the song on the fly if people aren't responding to it. They're like, okay, this track, let me move to something else. So that's a really interesting balance. I really, that's impressive that, you know, you kind of have to like...

Kam (10:06.891) Hmm.

Kam (10:17.812) Yeah.

Yeah.

olivia (10:27.021) take your best guess at the environment and the crowd and kind of do some research to make sure that what your program will land.

Kam (10:33.206) Definitely. Yeah, yeah, there's so many things to consider.

Aaron Bannie (10:35.434) Yeah, and sometimes like most of the time it kind of hits. There's sometimes where, you know, when we kind of debrief from doing the show, we'll go, oh, that song didn't really hit. Maybe we'll replace that song for something else and vice versa. But like, you know, we have so much music and so much more music coming out. But what we're trying to do now this year is like flip some of the old stuff and people kind of know, so give them like a refresh and then start to see some of the new stuff they've got coming out. So we've got some really

Kam (10:48.297) Mm-hmm.

Aaron Bannie (11:04.11) special tracks coming up this year. I'm not quite sure we can mention the name yet but if that gets delivered then that's something that will be really big and both us and the artist in question has been seeding in sets already so fingers crossed.

olivia (11:21.569) That's really exciting. And so doing my research on you and what you mentioned earlier about bringing urban elements into music, I know that it's important to you both to bring the black experience into music and to lift up black artists in the dance music genre. As we all know, I mean, we wouldn't have it without black or brown artists. So talk to me about what

Kam (11:45.134) Mm.

olivia (11:50.701) you know, how you are contributing to this mission and why it's important. And, you know, was that kind of part of like, when you got together, you're like, yes, this needs to be at the core of what we do.

Kam (12:02.57) Yeah, for me it's like always the next generation who's coming up. You know, I was, I don't think I'd be doing for music. I don't think I'd be doing music if I didn't see people who look like me doing it first. And I think it's sort of no mistake that I'm inspired by those black artists because that was very successful as well, you know what I'm saying? So I feel like black kids need to see that. They need to see all the options that are available to them.

Aaron Bannie (12:33.258) I don't think it was a very like, I don't think when me and Cam set out on this to be like, okay, we want to be black pioneers in this space. It just happened that people were saying that. And then, you know, we were lucky to be featured in Forbes in 2022. And it was literally out bridging the gap between, you know, urban music and electronica. For us personally, it's like we love hip hop and R&B and all in that genre.

Kam (12:36.61) Hmm.

Kam (12:40.866) Yeah.

Kam (12:53.154) Yeah.

Aaron Bannie (12:58.058) but it just comes with a bad connotation, like with concerts and shootings and everything else, it just never seems to be like a safe space where electronic music is that safe space. And you can be able to like share the love and everything else. We wanna make sure to say like, this is a safe space for us to collaborate and do music in this space and hopefully inspires other people from, you know, our color to come in and, you know, really kind of take over that space.

Kam (13:02.912) Yeah.

Kam (13:21.094) 100%. And I hear that community, hear our community complain a lot about how they don't feel safe. And I feel like, you know, house is ready, willing, and able to accept everyone with open arms, just a different temper. You know?

olivia (13:36.289) Yeah. And, and I mean, the great thing about house is how like malleable it is. You can bring all those different genres. I mean, you know, from literally opera to hip hop to R&B, I mean, the sample opportunities are endless. And so that's why, you know, there, there really is something for everybody, which is what makes it such a beautiful genre.

Kam (13:49.706) Mm-hmm.

Kam (13:54.27) Mm-hmm.

Kam (14:03.307) be saying.

olivia (14:04.225) Yeah, and so you mentioned, you know, 2022 being featured in Forbes, and before we actually started recording, you told me like your little side quest through America during COVID times. And I wanna dig into that a little bit because that is a really crazy story. I'll have you explain kind of how you got trapped here and then just had to move from place to place. So I kinda wanna hear how that wasn't that long ago. So...

Kam (14:32.798) No, I feel like I could, I'll do the up until the shows and then Eric can finish the rest. So at the time was actually 2021 when we were getting our, well, our manager Harrison came to us and he said, I think I can get you guys some shows over in the States. It will just be a very small tour, only about five dates. We'll do New York, Chicago, LA and a couple other spots.

olivia (14:33.517) Talk to me about it.

Kam (14:58.934) But at the time Australia was in hardcore lockdown. It was one of those periods where they wouldn't let people travel more than like five kilometers to, for anything. You know? So the shows were approved, the visas weren't, we hadn't practiced. We hadn't like actually done any live shows or practiced properly for any live shows in a long time. So Aaron would practice at home. And then I would practice out in the bush near my home.

And we built the set, I think via correspondence on like Zoom or something like that. Um, the visa has got approved two days before we were scheduled to fly. So at this point we took the gamble and we purchased tickets and the visa has got approved a couple of days before we were scheduled to fly, got on the plane. And then we're just like thrusted into like this really dope venue. So as Aaron mentioned earlier, Electric Zoo, um,

and then elsewhere and then Brooklyn mirage. So we went from like being in COVID, sorry.

olivia (16:00.217) You said Chicago too, I'm in Chicago. So where, do you remember?

Kam (16:04.405) What are we playing, Chicago?

Aaron Bannie (16:08.856) Oh.

Kam (16:09.254) It was... it wasn't Shuba's Tavern, was it? About a second time.

Aaron Bannie (16:12.282) No, it wasn't she was having it was, um, oh, on the street, on the corner. I can see the sign.

olivia (16:22.321) Shubas is cool though.

Kam (16:22.812) Hahaha. Damn. Yeah, shoes is dark.

Aaron Bannie (16:23.938) Schubert's is good, that's from the album, but this was... Is it Spy Bar, is that in Chicago? There you go. Rodriguez.

olivia (16:29.257) Okay

Kam (16:29.61) It was 5R, yeah, it was 5R. We opened up Rodriguez Jr. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So yeah, we did the shows, smashed them. That's when we started talking with agencies and labels and stuff. And then right at the end of the mini tour, we both got COVID.

olivia (16:38.265) That's awesome. Okay, all right, sorry. Sorry to derail you.

Aaron Bannie (16:41.714) Yeah.

Kam (16:58.294) And the government announced that they wouldn't be letting Australians back home until the nation's vaccinations rates were higher than 80%. And at that time they're at about like 72%. So it was a waiting game from there.

Aaron Bannie (17:11.902) Yeah, massive weighting game and luckily our management company, so we're signed with Prime Artists Management Group and the kind of the base, the guy at the time who's now in LA, Adam Lin, basically lives in, he's got houses everywhere, he's got houses in Ohio, he had a big house in Nashville and we were lucky that we could kind of like crash there when the team were not on the road and when they were on the road, we got kind of got shifted from

that nice kind of plush house to another Airbnb, which they just bought, but it wasn't renovated. Like the pool was green. It was just like derelict. It was a fucking nightmare. And we were on like these air mattresses. And this was like, I remember it being like, I remember this because like it was, we knew that at the time we were having a record deal from Sony, so we knew that was all going through. But because of the dynamics in Australia, especially for my situation, I'm renting in Australia.

I've got no money coming in. It's just eating through all my savings. I got my puppy who's thinking, where's dad gone? All this stuff. And my savings were just shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. And it was like October 23rd, 2021. And I just had literally zilch in my bank account. And I was like, am I making the right choice here? This is like, this is what I'm doing my life choices. Um, and then you kind of all flip around. We kind of got the green light to go back to Australia in November time.

Kam (18:30.238) haha

Aaron Bannie (18:38.55) And then we just made the decision. He's like, he said, we were away a long, long time. And also just all the prices as well, like to fly back home one way from LA to Australia was $5,000 each. It was, and it cost us also about, it cost us 10 grand each for the visas. It cost us about two, three grand to fly over there. So all this money just to really chase the dream.

Kam (18:39.874) So mind you, this is from August until November. It was pretty much three months.

olivia (18:44.505) Okay.

Kam (18:55.922) Yeah.

Kam (19:01.409) Yeah.

Aaron Bannie (19:07.686) And yeah, all in black.

Kam (19:07.946) We literally were just, we had our chips on the table when we went, like, all in.

olivia (19:14.513) Okay, I love that. It's a big theme of this show to kind of talk about those moments when you take the leap of faith. And obviously it was scary because in addition to, like you said, putting all your chips on the table, I mean, there was a pandemic and you just didn't know what was gonna happen next. Like here in Chicago.

Like we didn't know, let alone you're traveling from state to state, you can't get back home. There's all these other elements. So I'm curious, like what got you through mentally? How? How did you deal with that constant uncertainty in watching your bank account dwindle, like you said?

Aaron Bannie (19:55.362) I think for me it was just knowing that the record deal would go through and that would have been kind of the saving grace. And even though it happened, it was really strange. Like I kind of had this feeling that we would get stuck in America. And usually how I kind of react, I get really kind of anxious and like, what's going on? But I was like, we're meant to be here for whatever reason it is. And in that time, we got to meet Sony before we got the record deal with them.

Kam (19:55.938) Alright, alright, yeah.

Aaron Bannie (20:24.242) We got to meet lots of the agencies and then we ended up going with CAA. And we wrote most of the album in Nashville. So there was reasons to kind of be there. And so I was just in my head going, okay, I'm here for a reason. These are the reasons. It was kind of like squeaky bum time in terms of like financials, like it was kind of going, but it was a kind of calculated risk. And I was just, I was just.

Kam (20:47.073) Yeah.

Kam (20:50.582) Fish showing.

Aaron Bannie (20:50.822) I just knew that we were on the right path and I was, I guess, more than, I guess foremost was like I really believed in our music and I knew that our music would get us over the line where we needed to go.

olivia (21:05.06) Yeah.

Kam (21:06.31) Yep, yep. You gotta pray and you gotta surrender. Don't know what your religion is, but you gotta back yourself too. And we both had been doing it for that long though, we were pretty confident in our abilities. So we knew we were heading on the right path. It was, it's still scary though, really scary. I remember walking down to Pizza Hut, that Airbnb that we stayed in, and I bought a pizza and I sat down in the parking lot and I just fucking bored my eyes out.

I was sitting there, I was just holding this pizza like in the middle of a natural parking lot just crying my eyes out eating pizza. I was like what the hell am I doing here? But yeah, we just had a feeling and the conversations that we were having with people, the fact that we were, you know.

Aaron Bannie (21:38.799) Was the pizza cold?

Kam (22:02.25) bit of a hot space at the time, you know, we had people kind of like beating for us. So that definitely gave us an extra boost of confidence as well. We had options. They just went, they didn't come to fruition.

olivia (22:12.182) Yeah.

olivia (22:15.51) Do you feel like you can handle anything now after going through that?

Kam (22:21.198) I feel like I can handle a lot more, that's for sure. Yeah.

olivia (22:24.664) Yeah.

Aaron Bannie (22:25.462) Yeah, 100%, I think so. I mean, me personally, I've had kind of health issues back in 2017, 20, that's probably the worst period of my life, that's actually when I met Cam. So I know I can navigate through kind of anything. And I think that's why even the album was called Proof, there was two reasons to it, it was like proof that we actually made it and we could do this. And the other thing was just about the story that we concocted, because the album's like.

Kam (22:36.588) Yep.

Kam (22:50.24) Yeah.

Aaron Bannie (22:53.99) on a journey of two people through various different stages of relationships.

olivia (22:58.917) That's really cool. Like you need those character building moments to make meaningful music. If your life is easy, your music's gonna suck. You know?

Kam (22:59.102) Yeah, kind of.

Kam (23:06.818) That's true. Yeah, we have this clairvoyant that we both speak to like separately. And she's like, unfortunately, that's the gift of the curse of what you have. She's like, you've got to go through shit and transform it. And you have to, you know, you got to be like an alchemist. You have to choose to turn it into gold. You know what I'm saying? You got to take those moments because that's what everyone's, a lot of people are counting on with music is.

Aaron Bannie (23:07.953) Mm-hmm.

Aaron Bannie (23:12.298) Hmm.

Kam (23:36.214) you know, like hearing that their voice is heard and that someone has shared that same type of human experience. So if that's all we have to go through, then you know, that's that. We get to live pretty damn awesome life outside of having to transmute those emotions into sound. You know?

olivia (23:56.049) I love the alchemy concept. Like, I mean, as artists, that's what you are. You're taking individual sounds and, you know, alchemizing it into a track. And that's what you have to do with your life too. And now you're both in LA and it seems like you're settled and it seems like your puppy is stateside or maybe not a puppy anymore. But so, what kind of dog is it?

Kam (24:00.142) Mmm.

Kam (24:10.428) Mm-hmm.

Kam (24:17.474) Yeah.

Aaron Bannie (24:21.706) It's still a pup, it's still got that pup energy. Buddy, come here. Buddy, buddy, come here. He was flat out sleeping. One second, I'll get him. What are you doing there, my boy? What are you doing? Good boy. Oh. There he is.

Kam (24:24.407) Yeah.

olivia (24:27.288) This is my favorite.

olivia (24:33.717) Okay, for me, if I brought my chihuahuas in here, it would take a little chaotic. Oh, it's so cute. What's his name? Buddy, Buddy's his name. I love.

Kam (24:38.338) hahahaha

Aaron Bannie (24:47.114) His name's Buddy, and he's like, he's a English stuffy of ball terror, so you guys call him Pocket Pitbulls.

olivia (24:54.069) Yeah, he looks like a little seal.

Aaron Bannie (24:56.21) He looks like he's a little, I call him a little seal. That's what I call him, I call him fat little. Ha ha. Hey, you bud. So yeah. So you can imagine like my pain of missing him for almost like three and a bit months and wondering who was looking after him and that kind of stuff.

Kam (24:58.054) It does look like a scene.

olivia (25:00.866) He's so cute. He looks like he was snapping.

olivia (25:09.477) Of course.

And they do so much like growing in three months. And so, you know, that's crazy. Well, I mean, obviously you've both made the best out of the situation. And I love that, you know, you talked about like your belief in your project and your artistry and that's what got you through. Because if you don't have that, no matter the circumstances, like it is the difference between making it and not. If you don't believe...

in your art, how are you going to convince others to?

Aaron Bannie (25:42.946) Mm-hmm. Exactly. And it's funny, it's kind of as we've gone on this journey, it's, it's so weird because like, the reason why I'm so confident of we will get to where we need to go is because all of our peers, people who look up to in music, and they can be in very different genres, have all gone through a similar story, you know, super adversity, you know, really tough times, getting rejected by labels, all that kind of stuff.

Kam (25:43.03) That's very true. Yeah, yeah. And I...

Aaron Bannie (26:13.238) but they still persevere and make music. And naturally the process of music, regardless of the genre is the same. And we're like, well, we're doing what they're doing. You know what I mean? There's no difference to it. And for us, it's like, the only time it really goes downhill is when you stop. And we write pretty quickly. Like now we've kind of got like our, you know, our synergies in terms of, okay, we know what strengths and weaknesses that we have, and we can pretty much like smash out music pretty quickly.

And we just want to continue to put out great music and evolve the live show. And I know it will just automatically default to the next kind of stage.

olivia (26:56.769) Yeah, yeah, you're right. I mean, it's the same concept in like sales where they talk about like you're, you know, 100,000 calls away from being a millionaire or whatever it is. Like the difference in being successful or not is if you give up. And a lot of people do because they, you know, they see others and what it seems like overnight success, especially on social media, all of a sudden, all of a sudden someone's blowing up, you know, and it's not that.

Aaron Bannie (27:08.117) Mm-hmm.

Kam (27:08.264) Yeah.

Kam (27:15.042) Definitely.

Kam (27:26.125) Yeah.

olivia (27:27.317) And so the perseverance, it's like, there's no like crazy secret ingredient. It's just, it's really simple.

Aaron Bannie (27:35.49) Yeah, and we're just one song away. We're just one song away. We have one of our big songs just hit 20 million today on Spotify. That's Only If. So that's great. And you just never know what people kind of like. And for us, we're not so much worried about the numbers in terms of Out the Gate, because both our biggest songs, Friends and Only If, were so slow, like, in terms of numbers. And then they just boom.

olivia (27:41.705) I just have to have that. Congratulations.

Kam (27:59.894) Yeah, they took like two, two year and a half, two years to kind of get to even like a million or something. Yeah.

olivia (28:05.754) Wow.

Aaron Bannie (28:05.79) Yeah, and then it got picked up and just like juggernaut it. So, and I guess now that we've got like more followers and that kind of stuff when we do release music, you know, the numbers are just organically much better because we've got a bigger, I guess, following and listeners and all that kind of stuff. But I'm really confident. The...

Kam (28:22.702) Yeah, and there's no real expiry date on a good song. It's really just marketing, how many people are listening to it at the time, and all sorts of stuff.

Aaron Bannie (28:31.667) Exactly.

olivia (28:32.569) That's also a testament to, I talk about this a lot with artists when we're talking about social media and branding. If you make music or make content for the trends, that does have an expiration date. But if you make art that's going to stand the test of time, all it takes is presenting it a little bit differently later on, and it can be a hit, even if it wasn't.

Aaron Bannie (28:47.798) Mm-hmm.

Kam (28:48.139) Yeah.

Kam (29:00.436) Yeah.

olivia (29:01.037) first time and like I think that's really important for people to see and hear that like it's not all about like having that like instant success like the slow drip is good too and that just shows that like you have longevity.

Aaron Bannie (29:14.634) And I think for us, that will always be the case. Like, you know, our management team and agencies that we've worked for when we've kind of like, tried to grow the social side of what we do, hasn't kind of really connected for whatever reason. No, we went with some really like, repertoire agencies that said, like, yeah, jump on these trends, doing this and this and that. But for me, and having like a marketing background, for me, it's like, okay, then how does this go back to the music?

Kam (29:15.234) Definitely.

Kam (29:32.046) Thanks for watching.

Aaron Bannie (29:42.698) because that's what it is. I don't want to be doing some bullshit like trend that has no relevance to what we do or that kind of stuff. So we've really kind of like struggled with that. And we do have, you know, someone looking after our socials, but for us, we just want to like, the music is the marketing, do you know what I mean? I'm sure there's some like, you know, we do rely on labels and other partners to help kind of get that out there. We know that kind of like the influencer stuff works or some of those like music.

creation pages that work. But outside of that, it's kind of like, to be honest, I just find it cringe, do you know what I mean? Like, it's just trying to find something that really represents us. But I think for us, it's just, the music does it. We have so much great response when we do our shows. Like, people really kind of, they really, and people who don't know us become fans. So we know that we can translate really well when we perform. So we just wanna kind of like focus on that and focus on the music.

And if something kind of really hits and we work out what the social side of it will be, then great, but it's not a massive, massive focus.

Kam (30:51.286) Yeah, it might be the harder way, but yeah, if you have success and merit in the music itself and the shows, then you can always go back to the social media. It's like you got those like legendary legacy artists like Lenny Kravitz jumping on TikTok and like just dropping one video of him dancing and then everyone's like losing their minds. You know what I'm saying?

Aaron Bannie (30:59.54) Mm-hmm.

Aaron Bannie (31:11.409) Yeah.

olivia (31:12.765) It is the harder way and I resonate with that so much. Because I think, I've listened, I've interviewed artists who like, they are naturally good at like the trending silly videos because their personality is wired that way. And it's like, cool, if you want that to be part of your branding strategy, that's fine. If that works for you. But I think for the majority of people, it doesn't. Like, you know, you are both super talented. I consider myself talented at what I do. But when I see a trend and I try to think,

Kam (31:17.155) Mm-hmm.

olivia (31:42.121) Oh, how can I like relate this to what I do? My mind goes blank. And so to me, it's like, why am I gonna force myself to try to jump on this stupid shit? And it's not like, it's stupid for me. It's not stupid for others. Like I don't wanna whatever. But it's, I feel like a lot of artists now feel the pressure like, oh, I have to do this. Like I have to, you know, make this TikTok trend relevant to me or whatever. And you know, there's slower growth, sure. But like,

Kam (31:44.309) Mm-hmm.

Aaron Bannie (31:47.307) Yeah.

Kam (31:53.582) Mm.

Aaron Bannie (31:56.406) Mm-hmm.

olivia (32:10.197) Why do you want the inflated numbers anyway? Why would you want someone coming to you because you made like a silly dance video versus doing what you love to do and what you're best at?

Kam (32:13.645) Mm-hmm.

Aaron Bannie (32:21.77) Yeah, and it's just like credibility and authenticity of like who we are, do you know what I mean? And that's where we kind of like really kind of scaled back and stopped kind of doing it because it was just wasn't like everything that we try and do, even if it's making music or we know, we're signing a sponsorship deal or whatever it is, it has to feel right. It has to feel good inside, a really good feeling, do you know what I mean? And when you get that kind of ick and stuff, like, I'll just try and follow my gut more and go, I don't, I don't want to do this if it doesn't feel right. I don't think it doesn't.

Kam (32:22.42) 100%.

Aaron Bannie (32:51.198) add to the brand or what we do. Music is what we do.

Kam (32:55.156) Yeah.

olivia (32:57.229) Yeah, don't make content that gives you the ick, I guess is the, I think that's really good. Like I hammer that home when I talk to people about this because it's just like a, it's like a crazy pressure, like a phantom pressure of people's fears, so feel. So it's good that they hear it from you that's, you know, had success in just delivering authentic content and being yourselves. So,

Aaron Bannie (33:01.475) Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Kam (33:02.251) Hehehe

olivia (33:27.313) This has been so insightful and I love kind of hearing the human side of artists going deeper than just the music. Cause there's so much that makes an artist who they are. And so I really appreciate you both being candid with me and telling me that Pizza Hut story. It's so real. I think a lot of people can probably relate have had one of those moments.

Aaron Bannie (33:46.018) Bye, John. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kam (33:48.919) Hahaha

Kam (33:56.047) Yeah, yep. So that's all about life.

olivia (33:59.465) It is. So tell me before we wrap up, what do you have coming up like from now until like, you know, the spring that you're excited about?

Aaron Bannie (34:08.214) We're conquering the world. That's what's happening. We have our first, we have a really big tour announcement coming up. So we've already kind of announced our European part of that leg. So this is the first time that we've performed in, well, we'll be performing in Barcelona, Paris, London, Berlin, Poland. We have, We Belong Here Festival in Miami, then to February, then EDC.

olivia (34:10.637) I love it.

Kam (34:11.254) haha

Aaron Bannie (34:37.234) a Mexico 10 year anniversary. We're gonna be announced, can't announce it yet, but whole month of June, we got big tour support with a big act, which is gonna be really, really great. And we have collaborated with a really big, big artist and hopefully this song will be on their album, which will be a massive game changer. So yeah, lots of exciting things happening.

olivia (35:07.53) I'm excited for it all. I'll be following closely. So thank you again. It was so nice to meet you both.

Aaron Bannie (35:11.476) Awesome.

Thank you so much for your time. Thanks so much for having us.

Kam (35:15.323) Thanks for your time, appreciate it. See you later.

olivia (35:17.943) Perfect.

Aaron Bannie (35:18.154) Peace.